


Particular Kinds of Greed

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Ragnarok, as such contains ragnarok spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 11:22:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12704013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: Loki does not know what to do with a Thor who is disinclined to fight.





	Particular Kinds of Greed

After Thor is--Loki can think of no better word than _crowned_ \--there is a flurry of activity. A hold full of refugees, it seems, does not a ship’s crew make. There is a good deal of organizational work to be done, the kind of thing that Loki did much of during his stint as Odin. He doesn’t offer to help, and no one musters up the requisite bravery or foolishness to ask him to. Instead he watches from the shadows, assessing. 

Thor is different than Loki remembers. The loss of his hair and his eye and his hammer only make apparent the changes that have been wrought deep within his heart. He listens. He takes Heimdall’s advice. He does not let anyone--save Loki, who watches carefully, and knows Thor better than anyone still living--see the way that his fingers flex to reach for his hammer, the way that he turns, every so often, to ask for help from Volstagg or Fandral or Hogun, before he remembers. It was not until everyone on the ship was accounted for that Thor even learned they were dead, and the Lady Sif missing in action. 

He is a good leader. He will someday learn to be a great one. Not particularly cunning, no, but capable enough. A far cry from the boy whose ascension Loki sabotaged, what feels like lifetimes ago. Whose rule he was so jealously sure would reduce Asgard to a smoking ruin. What irony.

Thor makes decisions. He delegates the day to day running of the ship, the navigation to Midgard, even sets his new pet Valkyrie up with a gaggle of promising young brats to begin training. 

He never pauses when others can see him. The ship does not provide as much insulation from the public as Asgard’s palace once did. Thor is not so skilled at keeping his feelings from his face as Loki--no one could be--but he does an admirable job, under the circumstances.

When Loki finds him in his quarters, he is once again watching himself in the mirror. Without the eyepatch, this time. 

“Still here, I see,” Thor says when he sees Loki in the mirror. He says it like a joke, but Loki can detect the undercurrent of fear in it.

Thor truly has grown up. He doesn’t delude himself into believing that Loki will stay.

Thor takes the glass stopper from the bottle next to the mirror and pours two glasses. He hands one to Loki and raises his own. “To Asgard,” he says, in that same light tone.

“To those we have lost,” Loki counters. Watches the way that Thor’s remaining eye twitches, how the corners of his mouth turn down, all that false cheer melting away so quickly. Thor has always been easy to manipulate. One hardly needs a silver tongue. But some things truly do never change. “Sit down, brother, and take off that awful disguise of yours. You aren’t any good at it, and it’s much too late for you to attempt to learn the art of deception now.”

Thor knocks back his glass and sits down on his bed. “I don’t aim to deceive anyone,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to encroach upon your territory, Loki. Unless you’re offering to give me lessons.”

Loki takes a sip of his glass, reflexively masks his grimace at the taste of the strong alcohol Thor favors. “I am not a fan of lost causes,” he says. The fact that he is still here on this thrice-damned ship marks him a liar. The fact that he is standing here with Thor, trying to somehow _make him feel better _does as well.__

____

____

Self reflection is another lost cause, and one that Loki is happy to leave be. He sets his glass down. “Tell me, when were you planning to give yourself time to mourn?”

“There will be a ceremony held--”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Loki says, letting his tone cut.

“Brother,” Thor says, warningly, and there it is. The man who will someday be a king in truth and not only in name, lurking in his voice. “Are you sure this is a path you wish to follow?” He means: does Loki want to talk about Odin. Does Loki want to listen to Thor throw blame at him for his father’s own foolish, pointless death.

Loki spreads his arms, fans out his fingers. “There is no path in all the Nine Realms which I am afraid to follow,” he lies. “What about you?”

Thor laughs. Shakes his head, all the anger going out of him in an instant. “Clever. You truly do think me a fool.”

Loki does not know what to do with a Thor who is disinclined to fight. He sits down next to him on the bed. This close, the missing eye is impossible to ignore. Loki reaches out, touches the skin just below it. Thor doesn't even have the care to flinch. 

The scar isn’t awful, as these things go. Loki has seen much worse. Has given worse. Has even given much worse to Thor. But this scar came from _Hela_ , their wretched sister, this scar has permanently taken part of Thor’s sight, changed him in a way that will never be undone.

The possessiveness pulsing underneath Loki’s skin isn’t much of a surprise. Loki knows, Loki has always known, that there is a void deep inside of him, an endless pit of vicious anger only waiting for the right moment to be unleashed. A monster where there should be a man.

That anyone else but him should be able to mark Thor in such a way is intolerable. If Hela were here Loki would wring her neck, tear out her heart, stab her with a thousand daggers--

Loki really wishes that Thor would close his eye. The way that he’s watching Loki now only makes Loki want to crawl further out of his skin. Want to get out his knives, to shift into something, anything else, to bite Thor until he bleeds.

“It’s unfortunate our sister proved so resilient,” he says. “I would have liked to rend her limb from limb for this.” It is a strength, to be able to admit that one is outmatched. To know that cowardice, sometimes, is the only correct choice. Loki has never wanted the bravery, the conviction that he can defeat enemies that far outrank him, the sheer _idiocy_ that Thor so often insists upon.

Thor, ever the idiot, is smiling at him. “But it was you, after all, who defeated her in the end. Isn’t that funny? Finally, I was the brains of an operation, and you the brawn.” He laughs, face moving under Loki’s hands. Loki presses his thumb just below the empty eye socket, lightly.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Finally, I brought about Asgard’s destruction after all.” At Thor’s behest, even. What a cruel twist of fate. And Thor, so intent on his own small machinations, did not even stop to think what it meant, to send Loki down into the vaults of Asgard, to all the treasures that had been so carefully kept from him for so long.

The Tesseract is tucked away safely on the Commodore. Loki wonders what Thor’s face will look like when he realizes that Loki has it again. Does he have it in him to be betrayed one more time? Will he muster up even a small bit of shock that Loki has refused again to change? 

“Asgard is not destroyed,” Thor tells him. Loki drops his hand and stands up, backing away, just slightly.

“If you tell me again that Asgard is _a people, not a place_ , I will do everything in my power to throw you off this spaceship.” 

“I must say something,” Thor says, somber again, “to comfort the people in the loss of their home.”

“It was your home too.”

“But not yours?” Thor stands and steps closer, challenging Loki as he challenges everything. He cannot help it.

When he was a child, Loki dreamed, on occasion, of cutting Thor open. He dreamed of bending back Thor’s ribs and exposing his heart, soft and vulnerable. He dreamed of stealing it away, taking it for his own and burying it within his own chest, so that it might keep him warm. Something to fill the empty and endless ache that he felt there, even then.

Sometimes, he dreamed instead of climbing into Thor’s skin himself, curling up and staying there. 

Loki is a child no longer. Now he dreams of other, equally impossible things. 

“If Asgard is a people, dear brother, then I am not one of them.”

Closer once again. They’re standing nearly nose to nose, a familiar dance. Loki wonders which of them will draw blood first. 

But he has forgotten--Thor’s grief is new. Loki has grieved the loss of his home, his parents, for long years now. It lives inside him, in the place where he once thought he could put Thor’s heart.

“You are Loki of Asgard,” Thor says, and he wraps his arms around him. “Your actions--whatever they are, however much I disapprove of them--hold no bearing on that. Not ever.”

Loki’s heart likes to play tricks on him at times like these. It beats much too fast in his chest. He balls his hands into fists, feels his fingers itching for a knife. He stays very still until Thor releases him. He does not step back very far. 

“See?” Thor says. “You didn’t even stab me that time.”

_Don’t press your luck_ , Loki should say, or _Have to keep you on your toes, don’t I?_ Instead he reaches out and touches Thor’s face again, his cheek this time.

Princes of Asgard are raised to embrace only particular kinds of greed. For power, for glory, for obedience. They are raised to assume they will always be given those things, and if they are not, they must fight for them. But Thor has never had to claw his way out of despair, the way that Loki has. Thor doesn’t have the knowledge that no matter how far he falls, there will be a landing. He has never needed it, before now. 

Loki leans up and kisses him. Greedy for all the wrong things. Wondering what it will take for Thor to start a fight, for Thor to break down and sob, for Thor to admit that he and Loki are just the same now, not different. Two castaways without a home, without friends, with only each other. 

Thor takes him by the shoulders and lifts him nearly off the floor, walks him back, back, until Loki’s shoulders hit the wall, and he’s balanced just barely on his toes. 

There is a knife in Loki’s hands before he even realizes he cast the spell to summon it. But Thor does not attack him, with words or with weapons. Does not draw a blade or ask what Loki thinks he’s doing, what would Odin think, what would _Frigga_.

Perhaps his grief is good for something after all. 

Instead he is watching Loki the way that he watches a map while he plans a battle, searching for a gap in an enemy’s defenses. 

“Cat got your tongue?” Loki asks. He could slip out of Thor’s grasp if he wanted to. He will, in a moment. “Wondering when I’ll turn into a snake?” Says these things instead of _say something, for Asgard’s sake_ , say _something._

“You are always a snake, Loki,” Thor says, with undue fondness. Joking, but not. Thor who loved snakes, even as a child. “It is only that I don’t know that I can trust you.” 

“Finally, you’ve learned something,” Loki says. “Your dear Valkyrie would be a much safer choice to give care of your heart.” 

“Safety,” Thor says, with a scoff. “Where's the fun in that?” And then he laughs, that infuriating booming laugh, and he leans in to press his forehead to Loki’s. “You have always had my heart, brother,” he says, eye closed. “I wish you would believe it.” 

Loki lets go of the knife. He puts his hands to Thor’s chest, eyes wide open, and very carefully--for once, for just a moment--does not push him away. 

**Author's Note:**

> Like everyone else, Ragnarok dragged me kicking and screaming back to 2012. Turns out it's nice and cozy here in the past!


End file.
